Ex-president plans to ride 1st Seoul train to Pyongyang

James Brooke, New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, March 12, 2006

2006-03-12 04:00:00 PDT Seoul -- He is 82 years old and on a recent day was still frail from a winter bout of pneumonia. But Kim Dae-jung is planning what could be his last great act for inter-Korean conciliation -- an inaugural train trip from Seoul to Pyongyang.

"I would like to visit North Korea by train -- the railroad connecting the North and the South has been finalized," South Korea's former president said, sketching out a rail ride that would be a terrestrial echo of his June 2000 flight to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, which thawed half a century of war and enmity between the Koreas.

"I have plans to go North Korea," Kim said in his home in Seoul as February shadows lengthened in a reception room decorated with covers of American news magazines that celebrated his first trip, a journey that won him the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize.

Recently, general-level military talks between the Koreas ended inconclusively. In this mood of paralysis, Kim contends he can use his personal prestige in the North to inaugurate the rail line with a train trip north in June.

Kim left office in January 2003. His groundbreaking trip was soon clouded by allegations that the South Korean government and Hyundai Asan Corp. had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to North Korea to ensure that the summit meeting took place. In December 2003, Park Jie-won, Kim's chief of staff, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for bribing North Korea in the case.

Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea's current president and a protege of Kim, limited the scope of the investigation to presidential aides. Since then, Kim has lived in Seoul unmolested by prosecutors, gradually becoming the grand old man of South Korean politics.

The legacy of Kim's 2000 gesture to North Korea, expensive as it was, can be seen in new numbers for 2005.

Last year, inter-Korean trade grew by more than 50 percent, topping $1 billion. Nearly 300,000 South Koreans visited Mount Kumgang, a tourism enclave in North Korea operated by Hyundai Asan, and 87,000 South Koreans visited Pyongyang, more than triple the number in 2004. This summer, Hyundai plans trial tours to a third North Korean destination, Mount Paektu.

In 2006, Hyundai Asan hopes to expand a fledgling industrial park in Kaesong, North Korea, to as many as 40 South Korean factories from 11.

But, in the realm of inter-Korean politics, the second shoe never dropped. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, has not reciprocated Kim's gesture by visiting the south.

"I was disappointed that Kim Jong Il could not make a reciprocal visit," Kim said in the interview, noting that the North Korean leader made a weeklong trip to China in January. "The leaders of China have strongly advised him to visit here. But there is opposition from the inside, from the military, to his visiting South Korea."

North Korea's military, he said, also slows the progress in linking two railways in North Korea and South Korea, a measure that was endorsed by the two leaders at their meeting in 2000. South Korea's construction engineers are renowned worldwide for fast and efficient work, and fresh rails and ties now cross the Demilitarized Zone on the border with North Korea, but planned test runs of trains have been delayed since October.

"The military in North Korea is somewhat reluctant to re-link these lines," said the former South Korean president, a man who once had access to some of the best outside intelligence on North Korea, one of the world's most secretive nations.

When Lee Chul, the chief of Korea Railroad, South Korea's state-run railroad, visited Pyongyang in early February, North Korean officials rejected his proposal for a "World Cup train." He proposed having a train carry South Korean fans to the soccer championship in Germany in June by traveling up the Korean Peninsula and across Russia.

But North Korean officials have sent encouraging signals about the former South Korean president's request to inaugurate the rebuilt rail line.

To the former president, South Korea is now in a race with China for influence over North Korea.

"In North Korea, Chinese capital and products are increasingly present," Kim said. "There is the possibility that North Korea could become another satellite state of China. As South Korean capital goes into North Korea, we can keep this in check."

Since 2003, more than 150 Chinese companies have begun operating in or trading with North Korea, as much as 80 percent of consumer goods sold in North Korea are made in China, and 40 percent of North Korea's trade is with China.

With the two-way trade hitting $1.6 billion last year, China is North Korea's largest trading partner.

Noting this surge in the three years since he left office, Kim warned: "North Korea is developing a tendency to depend on the economic might of China."